Any ACA replacement should cover everyone, cost less, be simpler

Unless you’re a health insurance company CEO or stockholder or extremely wealthy, the new Republican-led plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act will mean you’ll pay more for worse coverage while the government loses money as it subsidizes the rich.

“The plan rearranges the deck chairs on the “Titanic” of our country’s broken and sinking health care system by throwing millions of Americans off of coverage, hiking rates on the elderly and others to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, and renames the ship,” said Ivan Miller, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care.

Miller said calling the plan “Rearrange and rename,” instead of “Repeal and Replace” might be funny except that, were the plan adopted, millions more Americans are likely to die and fall into poverty.

On Tuesday, S&P Global Ratings said the GOP replacement for the Affordable Care Act would result in six to 10 million Americans losing health coverage, and the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated its cost at an additional $600 billion over the next 10 years. This despite the fact the bill allows health insurers nearly $1 billion in tax write-offs on CEO salaries, and gives millions in tax breaks to the wealthy.

“Had lawmakers sought to fulfill promises by President Donald Trump to provide health care for every American–they could have done so much more simply for a fraction of the cost by replacing the health-insurance-dominated U.S. health care payment system with a nonprofit system to pay for health care for everyone,” Miller said.

“In order to propose a plan for health care for the 100% instead of to benefit the 1%,” Miller said, “lawmakers would need put the needs of American families before the greed of the health insurance industry and the wealthiest 1 percent.”

Every other developed nation provides health care to all people with better outcomes more affordably than the U.S does.

“If lawmakers wanted a simple way for the American people to have health care affordably, they would have proposed Medicare for all,” Miller said.

Instead, the GOP plan would siphon money from the Medicare trust fund so it would run out four years sooner, in 2025. It would also allow health insurers to charge as much as five times for older adults than for younger. Check out this excellent Editorial in the Aurora Sentinel, “Death by Health Care Reform” and: